Postage Prices

Australia Post Price Increase Takes Effect

04 July 2011

The proposed increase to business mail prices took effect today.

In addition to the increased price, Australia Post has significantly restructured the Off Peak service offering. The price increase for Off Peak is less than for PreSort Regular and the offering has been restructured in the following way:

• Delivery timeframe window has been reduced to two business days
• Additional delivery performance reporting will be introduced
• The indicia for Off Peak has been changed to Surface Mail

For related articles on the price increase click here

Australia Post Price Increase for Business Mail to go ahead

23 June 2011

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has confirmed that it will not object to a price increase across a number of Australia Post’s monopoly business mail letter services. The ACCC has confirmed its earlier preliminary view that it should not object to Australia Post’s revised proposal.

Whilst the ACCC has given the go head to the price increase ACCC chairman, Graeme Samuel has said “Beyond this price notification, the current approach to setting prices, including the allocation of costs, needs to be re-examined given the environment of declining demand for traditional letter services. The ACCC and Australia Post have agreed to re-examining the current approach before any future major price notifications.”

Australia Post has a statutory monopoly over the delivery of letters weighing less than 250g, which cost no more than $2.40 to send.

Australia Post is proposing to increase the prices of business mail services, including PreSort services which provide discounts to wholesale bulk mail customers who sort and barcode mail prior to lodgement.

At the same time, Australia Post has made significant changes to its Off  Peak PreSort letter services to try to make them more attractive to industry.

Key changes include:

• a reduction in the current delivery window of four business days to two.
• Better performance reporting
• A change to the Off Peak Indicia

In response to feedback from industry, including ADMA, Australia Post also revised down its proposed increase to Off Peak. The reduction of the increase was more than 50% for some categories.  A reversion to a 6pm lodgement time rather than 12pm as originally proposed was also in direct response to industry feedback.

Increased prices now include:

• Small (PreSort) Regular letter (delivered in the state of lodgement) prices increase from 42.7 cents to 45.7 cents
• Small (PreSort) Off Peak letter (delivered in the state of lodgement) prices increaeses from 41.6 centre to 41.9 cents

Click here for related articles

ADMA urges ACCC to scrutinise Australia Post price increase

07 April 2011

ADMA has urged Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to carefully scrutinise Australia Post’s proposal to increase the price of PreSort services, including Regular, Off Peak, Charity, Clean Mail and Acquisition.

In its submission ADMA outlined its key concerns including:

• The ACCC scrutinise that every avenue in terms of cost reduction has been pursued and that the price increase is not being sought so as to drive volume to Australia Post products that are not reserved services
• Continued price increases will result in permanent and irreversible moves away from the PreSort products as many businesses will move to non-mail channels
• The changes to design of the Off Peak PreSort offering have not gone far enough to meet business’ needs
• The price incentive to move to Off Peak PreSort servces are not sufficient to justify the cost of transitioning from Regular PreSort to Off Peak PreSort
• Australia Post should develop a pricing model that provides a discount dependant on volumes used, as occurs in so many other industries.

View the submission

View related articles

View the Australia Post announcement

ACCC releases Australia Post’s draft price notification Issues Paper

25 February 2011

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) today released an issues paper seeking comment on Australia Post's proposal to increase prices across a number of its monopoly business mail letter services.

Australia Post does not propose any increases to the 60 cent basic postage rate or the price of other Ordinary letters.

Australia Post lodged a draft notification with the ACCC on 25 January 2011 that proposed increases in the price of small, medium and large PreSort letters, Clean mail and Reply Paid mail. Clean mail is a discount bulk mail service used by businesses for letters that are not presorted or barcoded.

Click here for the Issues Paper

Click here for the previous news item that includes Australia Post documentation on the price increase

Australia Post proposes price increase

07 February 2011

Australia Post lodged a draft price notification with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) that proposes an increase to the prices of a number of its reserved services. It is proposed that the price increase, if it is approved by the ACCC, will become effective on 4 July 2011.

The draft price notification proposes an increase to Regular PreSort letter prices by an average of 2.8 cents and Off Peak PreSort letter prices by an average of 1.3 cents, as well as an average increase to Clean Mail prices of 2.3 cents and an increase to the Reply Paid annual fee from $65 to $80.

As part of its draft price notification Australia Post does not propose to increase the basis postage rate (BPR) or the prices of other Ordinary letters.

The ACCC intends to release an issues paper and provide an opportunity for submissions.

Click here for Australia Post's Draft Price Notification

Click here for Diversified Specifications – Economic Validations and Augmentations Report

Click here Value Adviser Associates – Betas and other CAPM parameters for Australia Post's reserved services business

Australia Post Prices to increase on 28 June

29 May 2010

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) announced on 28 May 2010 that it would not object to Australia Post’s proposed price increase which will lift the basic letter rate from 55 to 60 cents. This increase will have a commensurate flow on effect to pre-sort rates.

The rate increase will be effective 28 June 2010.

The ACCC objected to Australia Post’s price increase late last year but has agreed to this increase. Interestingly however Graeme Samuel, the ACCC’s chairman has indicated that it would not consider any further changes to the basic postal rate for the next two years.

Australia Post seeks five cent increase on basic postage rate

08 April 2010

Australia Post has announced today that it will be lodging a formal notification with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) proposing a five cent increase in basic postage rate.  Under Australia Post's proposal, the rate increase will take effect on 28 June 2010.

This latest announcement follows the ACCC's decision on 10 December 2009 to reject Australia Post's request to increase prices which would have taken effect on 1 January 2010 if the price increase had been approved.

The Australian Direct Marketing Association (ADMA) opposed the proposed increase to prices last year given that it followed so quickly after the price increase of September 2008.